Multilingual graduates are more competitive, aren’t they?

Now it is the era of creative, open – minded, and competent individuals. Most of the people want prestigious jobs, high salaries, and big opportunities. But what criterion is heavy and one of the strongest in getting and achieving all that?

The answer is being multilingual. Being multilingual means being able to speak two and more languages. And if you think that learning languages is a waste of time, you are mistaken and judging erroneously, just because of one simple reason – because “jobs requiring multilingual employees pay between 5% to 20% more per hour than the base rate” (Papora, 2013). So, why? Is that only because the employee can speak several languages? No, it’s not! Because being multilingual at a workplace you can challenge your employer with a lot of opportunities.

First, being multilingual at a workplace means “being international” (Papora, 2013), it means that you can help engage and attract international clients, investors, and cooperators. Second, you “become an asset” (Papora, 2013) to a company, which means that you will be able to keep the company up – to – date and compare and analyze the status of the company at an international level – sharing ideas of international workplaces and challenging your company to go with the times. Third, knowing other languages means thinking differently, so you become a source of “new perspectives” (Papora, 2013) for a company. You will encourage your company with new ideas and opportunities thinking from different angles and perspectives, with the help of which your company will just win, but not lose. Finally, being multilingual you will be ahead of anyone who is monolingual, because you become a “global workforce” (Papora, 2013) and can get a job anywhere.

So, aren’t we lucky to have the opportunity to speak at least three languages? According to Trent (2013), knowing other languages is challenging, but it worth pursuing, since it is easier to forget a language learnt for years than to acquire it fully.

Reference:

Papora. (2013, April 21). 10 Reasons Why Being Multilingual Is a Key Advantage in the Job Market Retrieved February 10, 2015, from http://www.papora.com/

4 thoughts on “Multilingual graduates are more competitive, aren’t they?”

Dear Arai,
I fully agree with your post that multilinguals are more competitive than monolinguals! I remember that last semester we have been informed of many positive benefits of being multilingual and pluringual. As well as cognitive abilities will be enhanced such as creativity, memory and problem-solving. Knowing one more language means knowing one more culture, because they are interrelated with each other. Multilinguals are aware of cross-cultural communication which makes them also more knowledgeable. Moreover, in Kazakhstan, it is difficult to find well-paid job without knowing foreign languages.

However, are there any some negative and bad disadvantages of multilingualism? If yes, I hope that benefits of multilingualism overweight them, right?!

Thank you very much, Almazhay!
Where there is a plus, there is a minus. There are some authors who claim that when a multilingual person’s performance of each language is measured separately, it is lower than of those who are monolingual. And one of the most common issues that occur with multilingual is that people tend to easily forget the language, if the language is not practised for long.
Yes, for sure, the advantages of being multilingual overweight its disadvantages! Just keep practising each language you know!

Hello!
Nowadays, language issue is directly connected with “HUGE” processes of globalization, intercommunication, and such notions as pluralism, multilingualism, trilingualism and etc. International organizations or organizations with several numbers of expats will require language proficient skills but the local organizations don’t pay so much attention on it. However, due to our transition into multilingual education policy with the deep attention on three dominant languages, in order to be competitive in a labor market besides having diploma you should be good enough in other spheres too. Finally, we can obviously that the language proficiency and salary connected strictly to each other.

Thank you very much, Marzhan!
You are absolutely right about the relation of language proficiency and salary. Because, while I was teaching in Almaty, there were students who were learning English only because those who know English are paid much more than those who do not know. And I think you will agree that higher salary is a good strategy of a company to motivate its employees to learn languages.